An unexpected run in in a hospital waiting room has huge impacts on the people involved. One person in particular. More psychological than horror. Not very graphic, only a tiny bit of violence. A hopefully creepy little one-shot.

This is a story I started a few years ago, and never quite had the inspiration for until now. The spelling has now been fixed! I'm not sure what category to put it into, so I'm going to put it into horror, although it isn't really scary.

Any story you read will start in the most unusual pace imaginable, just to make you say 'oh, that's different'. In a horror story it would be night time, raining, with lightening splitting the sky. It was actually just the regular midday chaos of a car park. Okay, it was a hospital car park, and I was helping my friend Elliot limp into the hospital with a broken ankle; the result of a failed rail slide. Elliot has been my best friend since primary school, but it's a little annoying that he cares more about that skateboard than me - you couldn't get him away from it if you strapped a bomb to it. Now I almost wish it had been me with the broken ankle and him in the waiting room. Then things would have been different. Then I wouldn't have met Fox.

I know what you're thinking: a red, fury animal with a bushy tail. Well, that's not it. This type walks on to legs, with skin that's the envy of most vampires, messy black hair that would turn the women on shampoo adverts green, and strangest of all, eyes as deep and dark as black-holes. Still to this day I would swear on my life that they are darker than ebony. At that particular moment they were fixed on the clock with a gaze similar to that of a maths geek with a very difficult equation.

The whole building could have come down around me and I wouldn't have noticed it. He was captivating, mesmerizing. I barely noticed them wheeling Elliot away on a wheelchair while he whined, or the two other teenage girls in the waiting room, both as stricken with him as I was. Worse of all, was the way he acted like he didn't notice. Maybe he honestly didn't. I wish that I had met him somewhere else, anywhere else. Somewhere Where I could have sat down and talked to him, and got to know him. I still desperately to want to know more about him, but all I know is his name. Fox.

There were no seats left in the waiting room, so I was forced to stand. The minutes ticked by painfully slowly. There was no sound beside the two teenage girls trying to help each other pluck up the courage to talk to him. It was peaceful, almost tranquil. And then the spell was broken.

There was shouting and clattering outside. I stuck my head through the door to see what was happening, instantly wishing I hadn't. A young lad, no more than about sixteen, was running down the hallway - well, trying to run - and making a right scene in the process. He was falling over or stumbling every few steps, often pulling a trolley of equipment or another person down with him. A sickening gash was visible across his stomach, spewing out blood at an alarming rate. Even worse was what he was shouting, a great many things which I won't repeat. One thing I will never forget, though, is him screaming, "Fox! Fox, buddy, we gotta get outta here. We gotta go before..." He was cut off by two nurses who had caught up with him and were now calling for help.

Fox was the first there.

The wounded lad, who was struggling against the nurses grip and calling them all manner of strange things, looked terribly relieved to see Fox coming. I'm sure now he knows how foolish hat relief was. Fox bunched his hand into a fist by his side, lifted it up and then pulled it back in one swift and graceful movement. He hit his 'buddy' square in the face. The instantly limp body crumpled, the only thing stopping him from hitting the ground being the two nurses. Fox turned to the nurses, all too calmly, and told them, "Now you can operate."

He walked back into the waiting room and turned back to the clock. Everyone was staring at him. Sure, the boy needed to be calmed, but punching him in the face was an unnecessary cruelty. The nurse put the guy on a stretcher and wheeled him off to A&E. We all sat in silence, nobody sure of what to say. It went on like that for I-don't-know-how-long. Fox just watched the clock, as though he was waiting for something. I know now what he was waiting for.

Another set of sirens sounded somewhere close. These were different from the constant ambulance sirens, though. And they seemed to strike a chord with Fox, too, as that was when he left the waiting room. I slipped through the door myself to see what was happening. "You know, curiosity killed the cat." The was a sneer like quality to Fox's voice, one that I had not seen coming.

"It's lucky I'm not a cat then." I replied, when I finally regained my composure.

"You remind me a lot of a cat. Parents not here with you? You seem awfully self assured. Do you just think that bad things can't happen to you? How do you know I'm not some psychotic murderer, and that I'm not responsible for my companion's condition?"

I didn't like the way he said that. The way that he had the nerve to call me self assured, when he was so arrogant. The way that he asked about my parents. The semi-threatening way he asked the final question. Yet he was still oddly mesmerizing. I hate that about him the most: the fact that it's so difficult to hate him. Even more than I hate the way that he strode out of the hospital, as the sirens drew closer, looking as though he didn't have a care in the world. "Send them my greetings, Kitten." were his parting words. "Tell them this is the day that they almost caught the great Fox Kennedy."

And then he was gone, over the fence around the hospital car park and away. Not long after a police car showed up. They asked everybody what had happened, and everybody told him. I could see that look in their eyes; the one that I was sure was in mine. A look of pure unknowing. I wasn't sure what had happened, I barely believed that it had, I just passed on the message exactly like he had told me. And I went home, and told everybody that I was fine, and just a little confused. And when we watched the news, and saw their faces, I pretended it was all alright.

I never told anybody about me visiting Jake Rivers, the fifteen year old schizophrenic, in the hospital. I never told them about all the nights I spent awake, in bed with my laptop, endlessly looking over the case of Fox Kennedy. I still visit Jake, although it's in a different type of hospital now, and I tell him what's happening on the outside. He likes to hear about it, and to talk to somebody. And he pretends that it's all alright. It's lucky he's not in maximum security, really, after he and Fox tried to escape last time. And I even spoke to those two girls in the waiting room, and I e-mail and text them, and we hang out sometimes, and I even introduced them to Elliot.

And we all pretend not to, but I know that every one of us is wondering about Fox. And I know that Jake wants to know why Fox punched him, and left him in the hospital to be taken back to his cell. And the girls that wonder why it had to be him, of all people, that captivated them so. And I wonder about everything, about who Fox truly is, why he did it, why he fascinates me so much. I know what he did now, there was a big story in the news paper about his escape, about the people he killed before and the ones he killed getting out. And when I say I wonder why, people just laugh and say it's because he's crazy. And maybe that's true, but if they ever found out about my fascination - my obsession - they would think I'm crazy.

So now I lie awake at night, looking over the internet pages and the newspaper clippings, wondering. And the police are still on their Fox-hunt. And Elliot still complains about not getting to meet the psycho. And I still wonder.

But the one thing I always wonder about most is why he called me kitten.

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